We talk about social service, service to the people, service to humanity, service to others who are far away, helping to bring peace to the world - but often we forget that it is the very people around us that we must live for first of all. If you cannot serve your wife or husband or child or parent - how are you going to serve society? If you cannot make your own child happy, how do you expect to be able to make anyone else happy? If all our friends in the peace movement or of service communities of any kind do not love and help each other, whom can we love and help?

Breathing in, I am aware of my heart. Breathing out, I smile to my heart and know that my heart still functions normally. I feel grateful for my heart.

There is the mud, and there is the lotus that grows out of the mud. We need the mud in order to make the lotus.

To think in terms of either pessimism or optimism oversimplifies the truth. The problem is to see reality as it is.

Smile, breathe, go slowly.

Before you do something to help, your presence already can bring some relief.

There are some people who eat an orange but don't really eat it. They eat their sorrow, fear, anger, past, and future.